Public Vision, Private Lives: Rousseau, Religion, and 21st-Century Democracy

by Mark S. Cladis

Overview

Mark S. Cladis pinpoints the origins of contemporary notions of the public and private and their relationship to religion in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His thesis cuts across many fields and issues-philosophy of religion, women's studies, democratic theory, modern European history, American culture, social justice, privacy laws, and notions of solitude and community-and wholly reconsiders the political, cultural, and legal nature of modernity in relation to religion.

Turning to Rousseau's Garden, its inhabitants, the Solitaires, and the question of restoration and redemption that preoccupied much of Rousseau's thought, Cladis examines how Rousseau addressed the tension between the joys and moral obligations of social engagement and the desire for solitude. He was caught between two possibilities: active involvement in the creation of an enlightened and humane society or extrication from social entanglements in favor of cultivating a spiritual interior life. Yet Rousseau did not view this conflict as a desperate division. Rather, for him it was a moral struggle to be endured by those who had fallen from the Garden.

For this edition Cladis has added a substantive introduction that discusses the role of religion in contemporary democratic societies, particularly in American public life. Cladis proposes four models of thinking about religion in public and champions what he calls spiritual democracy-a dynamic, culturally specific, and progressive democracy. Cladis argues that spiritual democracy refers not only to a society's legal codes and principles but also to its democratic culture and symbols and its daily practices and institutions. It encompasses the nation's character, diverse identities, and a distinctivel exchange between the nation's public vision and citizens' complex, private lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231139694
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/26/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1320L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark S. Cladis is professor and chair of religious studies at Brown University. He has taught at the University of North Carolina, Stanford University, and Vassar College, where he served as chair. He is the editor of two books and the author of A Communitarian Defense of Liberalism: Emile Durgakheim and Contemporary Social Theory.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Religion, Democracy, and Modernity: The Case for Progressive Spiritual Democracy
Preparing for the Journey: An Introduction
1 From the Garden to the City: The Tragic Passage
1. Nature's Garden
2. Revisiting the Garden's Solitaires
3. From the Garden to the Blessed Country: The Precarious Passage
4. The Rush to Slavery
5. The City: Life in the Ousted Condition
6. Overcoming Moral Evil: Rousseau at the Crossroads
2 Paths to Redemption
7. Reforming the City: The Extreme Public Path
8. Evading the City: The Private Path
9. The Mountain Village: The Path to Family, Work, Community, and Love
10. Reconciling Citizen and Solitaire: Religious Dimensions of the Middle Way
11. Residual Conflict: Democracy and Ineluctable Friction
Conclusion
A Way Forward: Rousseau and Twenty-First-Century Democracy
Notes
Works Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

Jeffrey Stout

This is the most important discussion of the conflicts between public and private life yet written by a specialist in modern religious thought. The writing is clear and vigorous; the thinking is careful and well informed throughout. A wonderful book.

— Jeffrey Stout, professor of religion, Princeton University

Editorial Reviews

"Recommended." - Choice

Choice

"...engaging, insightful, and challenging."—Journal of the American Academy of Religion

From the Publisher