Jean Bethke Elshtain
Biographic Data
| ID | 3586405 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jean Bethke Elshtain |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jean Bethke |
| FAMILY NAME | Elshtain |
| SIGNATURE | ELSHTAIN J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 113 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 197 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 115 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Public Man, Private Woman
Cosmopolitanism and the Claims of Religious Identity
Public Man, Private Woman
The Compassionate Warrior
Politics & Religious Consciousness in America
This exploration of the tensions of politics and religion in the United States, from its earliest settlement to contemporary times, is the first coherent history of American religious thought and practice within the context of politics. Kelly sets forth a chronology and topology of the patterns of collaboration, competition, and interaction of politics and religion in America
Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard John Neuhaus on Religion and Democracy in the United States
Richard John Neuhaus, like Reinhold Niebuhr before him, understood the vital civic role that religion plays in democratic society. As pastors and public intellectuals, both men were committed to public or civil forms of religion that, at their best, could inform, inspire, or chasten American political thought and action. There are crucial differences, nevertheless–between Niebhur’s and Neuhaus’s historical contexts, theological outlooks, politica…
Religion and American Public Life
In his 2000 best seller Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Civic Community, Robert Putnam analyzed the links between social capital and civic engagement. Lamenting the decline of “civic America,” he called for a Tocquevillean renewal of voluntary association in the United States. In American Grace, Putnam and coauthor David Campbell—who also helped with the preparation of Bowling Alone —return to the analysis of American civil so…
Ethics Beyond War's End
The World as We Know It
America's domestic reaction post 9/11 was laudable. President George W. Bush drew a clear distinction between the terrorists and Islam as such. Religious communities called upon the devout to avoid religious hatred and acrimony. As a result, there were few attacks on American Muslims. Nonetheless, many Americans support the "war on terror" against militant Islamists, and feel disquiet over those elements of Islamic teaching that appear to deny ci…
The State and Violence
Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 2009) offers a theory of the evolution of the modern state and an even more ambitious framework “for interpreting recorded human history.” The book raises fundamental questions about the political structuring of violence, the functions of the rule of law, and the establishment and maintenance of political order. In doing so, it speaks to a range …
Religion and Democracy
The secularization hypothesis has failed, and failed spectacularly. We must find a new paradigm to help us understand the complexities of the relationship between religion and democracy
Woman, the State, and War
Does `gender' as a category of analysis or as a central feature of a logic of explanation alter in significant ways Kenneth Waltz's famous `levels of analysis' as developed in his classic, Man, the State, and War? One overriding claim of feminist international relations has been that `gender' alters all levels of analysis; thus, changing `man' to `woman' in the formulation `man, the state, and war' significantly transforms our understanding of in…
The global importance of ‘illiberal moderates’, an exchange
The following is an exchange concerning the concept of ‘illiberal moderates’ and its implications for a new global architecture as well as for a worldview that sees the evolution of a global core of shared values which favour domestic and international security, in sharp contrast to the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis. The original statement was published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs (Etzioni 2006). A more extensive treatment …
Peace, Order, Justice
On Never Reaching the Coast of Utopia
Elshtain argues that the realist-idealist divide serves no useful heuristic or even polemical purpose. Beginning with Tom Stoppard's acclaimed trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, Elshtain unpacks utopian arguments of recent vintage, showing their distinctive features. She goes on to display the utopistic/idealist `moments' in the work of self-described `realist' E. H. Carr as part of a critical re-examination of Carr's work. The article continues with …
Introduction
Elegy and Eulogy
Research Article| April 01 2008 Elegy and Eulogy Jean Bethke Elshtain Jean Bethke Elshtain Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2008) 14 (2): 291–295. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2007-075 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jean Bethke Elshtain; Elegy and Eulogy. Common Knowledge 1 April 2008; 14 (2): 291–295. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/09…
Etzioni on Religion
The author examines and criticizes some of the key arguments from Security First, with a focus on issues related to Etzioni's discussion of "Illiberal Moderates." Etzioni's analysis of Christianity and Islam are found to be problematic. By looking at the just war traditions in both religions, the author finds very different models rather than the parallel ones suggested by Etzioni
A Response
In this article Professor Elshtain responds to the critiques offered by the symposium and, five years on from 11 September 2001 and three years on from the initial publication of Just War Against Terror, revisits her analysis of the moral issues facing America and the world in the context of the war on terror . She offers a stout defense of her original claim that the war on terror has presented America with many tough decisions to make, decision…
Politics and Persons
Against the New Utopianism
There is much that is interesting in Anthony Burke's essay. Unfortunately, Burke is unable to resist hyperbolic language and too readily substitutes rhetorical onslaught for compelling argument. For example, those he criticizes as being neo-imperialists in liberal internationalist clothing are many times over said to present “disturbing” or “disturbing indeed” arguments. We are told that liberty is a “hermaphrodite”; that the war on terrorism con…
Toleration, Proselytizing, and the Politics of Recognition
Charles Taylor first became known to many through his important essays challenging the regime of behavioralism in the human sciences. For those like myself who were clinging to the hope that there would be room for scholars who were not committed to a positivist epistemology and to the behavioralist outcropping in departments of Political Science, Taylor was a lifeline. He helped many whose training was not in philosophy proper but in its politic…
The Jane Addams Reader
Jane Addams was a prolific and elegant writer. Her twelve books consist largely of published essays, but to appreciate her life work one must also read her previously uncollected speeches and editorials. This artfully compiled collection begins with Addams's youthful Junior Class Oration on women as Breadgivers, features thoughtful examinations of topics as diverse as Tolstoy and Gandhi and Public School and the Immigrant Child, and even includes…
Democracy On Trial
Democracys Precarious Present * The Politics of Displacement * The Politics of Difference * Democracys Contentious Past * Democracys Enduring Promise
The City of Man
Foreword Jean Bethke Elshtain Introduction Part One: THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF MODERN MAN CHAPTER I The Authority of History CHAPTER II The Sociological Viewpoint CHAPTER III The Economic System Part Two: THE SELF-AFFIRMATION OF MODERN MAN CHAPTER IV The Hidden Man CHAPTER V The Triumph of the Will CHAPTER VI The End of Nature Notes Index
II. Reflections on War and Political Discourse
On beautiful souls, just warriors and feminist consciousness
Moral Woman and Immoral Man
Sovereignty, Identity, Sacrifice
Sacrifice ME [a. F, ad. L] 1 . Primarily the sl ughter of an animal as an offering to God or a deity. Hence the surrender to God , for the p pos of propitiation or homag , of ome object r ossession. Also fi . offering of ayer, thanksgiving, penitenc , ubmission, tc. 2. That which is offered in sacrifice; a victim immolated on the altar; anything offered to God or a deity as an act of propitiation or homage. 3. Theol. The offering by Christ of him…
Religion and Democracy
The secularization hypothesis has failed, and failed spectacularly. We must find a new paradigm to help us understand the complexities of the relationship between religion and democracy
A call to Civil Society
Power Trips and Other Journeys
Each chapter of this book treats a particular historical or contemporary topic of civic concern. Some are centered on current family crises and issues (the family wage, child abuse, the new eugenics ) while others look to the wider national and international polity. Yet each, insistently, returns to common themes: the many faces and forms of power; struggles for autonomy; the need for human sociality and community. Elshtain s essays on controvers…
International Justice as Equal Regard and the Use of Force
Elshtain presents a case for the primacy of politics if one would argue persuasively about international justice. Without political stability, all attempts to assist developing states, or to sustain persons caught in the chaos of “failed states,” must fail. A concept of justice lies at the heart of this discussion and revolves around the fundamental questions of to whom justice is owed and in what justice consists. Have we any obligations beyond …
Task Force on Civic Education Statement of Purpose
Democracies, from nations to small communities, cannot survive and thrive without robust engagement in the political controversies (and the well-earned celebrations) that sustain them. Civic engagement in, and a personal sense of responsibility for, the health of our inescapably political life are the lifeblood of a liberal democracy. And yet Americans, at this century's end seem indifferent, cynical, and perhaps afraid of politics. The evidence …
Public Man, Private Woman (Women in Social and Political Thought)
Feminist Discourse and Its Discontents
The Feminist Movement & the Question of Equality
Equality is a rich, difficult, contested political concept, and the choice among apparently reasonable meanings has implications for the kind of social policies one urges. Prof. Elshtain moves from exposition of equality as an essentially contested political concept to examination of Feminist versions of sex equality. The dominant view in the contemporary Feminist movement emphasizes equality of opportunity, but this actually justifies a sharply …
Introduction
Shooting' at the Wrong Target
Women and War
The questions with which I began and ended Women and War remain: How might we locate ourselves in order to create space for a less rigid play of individual and civic identities and virtues than those we have thus far known? What alternatives of citizenship can we draw upon? What perspectives within our reach offer hope for sustaining an ethos that extends the prospect of limiting force and the threat of force? In the book, I recommend a form of c…
Democracy at Century's End
There is in the disintegration of society's social fabric a threat to democracy. As associations and civic bodies that serve as intermediaries between citizens and government diminish, individuals find themselves isolated and exposed. Into this vacuum moves a top-heavy administrative state or, possibly more relevant today, an undiluted, market-driven consumerism. Aiding this disintegration are two trends: a move toward juridical politics and a mo…
A Man for This Season
Thank heaven for little girls”
Woman, the State, and War
Does `gender' as a category of analysis or as a central feature of a logic of explanation alter in significant ways Kenneth Waltz's famous `levels of analysis' as developed in his classic, Man, the State, and War? One overriding claim of feminist international relations has been that `gender' alters all levels of analysis; thus, changing `man' to `woman' in the formulation `man, the state, and war' significantly transforms our understanding of in…
Peace, Order, Justice
On Never Reaching the Coast of Utopia
Elshtain argues that the realist-idealist divide serves no useful heuristic or even polemical purpose. Beginning with Tom Stoppard's acclaimed trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, Elshtain unpacks utopian arguments of recent vintage, showing their distinctive features. She goes on to display the utopistic/idealist `moments' in the work of self-described `realist' E. H. Carr as part of a critical re-examination of Carr's work. The article continues with …
How Does—or Should?—Theology Influence Politics
The question discussed in this article is whether Christian theology should influence contemporary political debates. The topic is discussed through two practical case studies: (1) technological advances in genetic engineering and (2) the just war tradition and the use of force. In the first discussion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's unfinished Ethics is employed to demonstrate the importance of substantial theological categories to resist a reductionist …
Consilience or Creation
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Forum
It seems almost churlish to criticize a book as well-intentioned and clearly argued as The Transformation of Political Community . There is much in the volume to admire and to endorse. But there are also problems—there always are—and I will move to address these shortly. First, however, I want to point to some of the book's undeniable strengths. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Linklater's argument is the manner in which he takes on board a …
Commentary
Moral Woman and Immoral Man
Thank heaven for little girls”
The Feminist Movement & the Question of Equality
Equality is a rich, difficult, contested political concept, and the choice among apparently reasonable meanings has implications for the kind of social policies one urges. Prof. Elshtain moves from exposition of equality as an essentially contested political concept to examination of Feminist versions of sex equality. The dominant view in the contemporary Feminist movement emphasizes equality of opportunity, but this actually justifies a sharply …
Public Man, Private Woman
The Practice of Political Authority
Kant, Politics, & Persons
This essay focuses on Kant's understanding of politics and persons and is aimed at assessing the relations in his moral philosophy between human reason on the one hand and moral autonomy, political action, and social change on the other. "Any serious claim that Kant has on the attention of contemporary political theorists," the author says, "rests on the implications of his systematic philosophy for political thought." Professor Elshtain argues t…
A Feminist Agenda on Reproductive Technology
Book reviewed in this article: The Custom-Made Child? Women-Centered Perspectives. Helen B. Holmes, Betty B. Hoskins, Michael Gross, editors
On beautiful souls, just warriors and feminist consciousness
Feminist Discourse and Its Discontents
Response to Baer and Bositis
Baer and Bositis's openness in taking biology seriously is welcome and refreshing. For good reasons and bad, social scientists, including those who see themselves as feminist, have suppressed consideration of biological realities. They have tended, implicitly, to accept the notion of tabula rasa-that “blank” creature waiting to be written on by the organized forces of society-that underlies so much political theorizing in the West. As the philoso…
Toward a Reflective Feminist Theory
The essay begins with a statement of what is necessary in order to develop a logic of social explanation which can account for the creation of female identity, public and private: explore female speech and language; redescribe social reality in a manner that allows for, and sustains, critical reflection: conceptualize plausible alternatives to the prescnt; and avoid repetition of the compulsions of the past. One strong example of a feminist analy…
Public Man, Private Woman
Childhood, Family, and the Bureaucratic Alternative in America
Toward a reflective feminist theory
The Family in Political Thought
Commentary on “Human Nature and Political Theory”
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A Feminist Perspective in the Academy
Public Man, Private Woman (Women in Social and Political Thought)
The War over the Family
II. Reflections on War and Political Discourse
The Relationship Between Political Language and Political Reality
Albert Camus' ironic judge-penitent, Jean-Baptiste Clemence, remarks to his compatriot in the seedy bar, Mexico City, in a shadowy district of Amsterdam, the mist rising off the canals, the fog rolling in, cheap gin the only source of warmth, “Somebody has to have the last word. Otherwise, every reason can be answered with another one and there would never be an end to it. Power, on the other hand, settles everything. It took time, but we finally…
The Family in Political Thought
Books in review
Luther Sic — Luther Non
“Luther is far more paradoxical, and interesting, than the popular image holds and far less the unambiguous patriarch than narrowly construed feminist argumentation would have it.... Luther emerges as radical in his views, penning a political-theology that bears both liberating—with our notion of freedom in mind—and baneful implications.”
Books in review
Political science (83 works) · Sociology (78 works) · Law (66 works) · Philosophy (53 works) · Politics (52 works) · Law (40 works) · Epistemology (33 works) · Philosophy (25 works) · Computer Science (22 works) · Psychology (18 works)