Sartre's Radicalism and Oakeshott's Conservatism: The Duplicity of Freedom

by A. Farr

Overview

If man has no nature - if our intellect and understanding are products of our own activities - do we possess a key to self-modification? Are we free to re-make mankind? Sartre champions the romantic idea that we can - by sheer determination - begin afresh. Oakeshott is struck by the vandalism of such a project - he seeks to defend political culture from degradation by meddling academics. The Radical and Conservative understanding of social order and the human self are compared in this in-depth analysis of two contrasting philosophies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333684498
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	03/01/1998
Edition description:	1998
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Freedom and Its Antitheses Causality The Past SARTRE The Condition of Consciousness The Playful Project The Sources of Fragmentation OAKESHOTT Understanding Experience The Vigour of Inheritance The Achievement of Legal Order The Agent and the Concrete Person CONCLUSION: Freedom Lost and Freedom Made Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

Taking the two philosophers as representatives, delineates contrasting conclusions to the notion that humans have created their own intellect, consciousness, and achievements rather than responding to an innate nature. Characterizes the radicals as believing that the inherited social order is responsible for hatred, cruelty, and exploitation and seeking to reorganize society to end such disorder. Finds the conservatives to value the inherited institutions as the repository of our sense of truth and justice, and thus to resist changing them. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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