Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:23:39.556Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Virtue Today: A Critique and a Proposal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Shelley Burtt
Shelley Burtt
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I argue for a distinction between publicly oriented and privately oriented conceptions of civic virtue. I first provide a critique of two current politics of virtue (liberal and republican), arguing (1) that despite their differences, they are both publicly oriented and (2) that their problems lie in this public orientation. I conclude by arguing for the legitimacy and promise of a privately oriented politics of civic virtue, using as examples of this approach Cato's Letters from the early eighteenth century and the work of two contemporary theorists, Bruce Ackerman and Stephen Elkin.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 360 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, Bruce. 1984. “The Storrs Lectures: Discovering the Constitution.” Yale Law Journal 93:1013–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ackerman, Bruce. 1991. We the People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Barber, Benjamin. 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Budziszewski, J. 1986. The Resurrection of Nature: Political Theory and Human Character. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Budziszewski, J. 1988. The Nearest Coast of Darkness: A Vindication of the Politics of Virtues. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Burtt, Shelley. 1990. “The Good Citizen's Psyche: On the Psychology of Civic Virtue.” Polity 23:23–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burtt, Shelley. 1992. Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England, 1688–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elkin, Stephen L. 1987. City and Regime in the American Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramnick, Isaac. 1988. “The ‘Great National Discussion’: The Discourse of Politics of 1787.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 45:3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macedo, Stephen. 1990. Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism. Oxford: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maclntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Maclntyre, Alasdair. 1990. First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues. Minneapolis: Marquette University Press.Google Scholar
Michelman, Frank. 1988. “Law's Republic.” Yale Law Journal 97:1493–1537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagden, Anthony, ed. 1987. The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna. 1981. “Justice: On Relating Public to Private.” Political Theory 9:327–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1972. Government of Poland. Trans. Kendall, Willmore. Indianapolis: Bobbs–Merrill.Google Scholar
Salkever, Stephen. 1990. Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sinopoli, Richard C. 1987. “Liberalism, Republicanism, and the Constitution.” Polity 19:331–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 1985. Liberalism and American Constitutional Law. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 1989. “‘One United People’: Second-Class Female Citizenship and the American Quest for Community.” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 1:229–293.Google Scholar
Spitz, Elaine. 1986. “Citizenship and Liberal Institutions.” In Liberals on Liberalism, ed. Damico, Alfonso J.. Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R. 1988. “Beyond the Republican Revival.” Yale Law Journal 97:1539–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1989. “Cross-Purposes: The Liberal–Communitarian Debate.” In Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, Nancy L.. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1945. Democracy in America. 2 v. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Trenchard, John and Gordon, Thomas. 1969. Cato's Letters. 4v. Facsimile reprint. 2v. New York: Russell and Russell.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1980. Radical Principles: Reflections of an Unreconstructed Democrat. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Will, George. 1980. Statecraft as Soulcraft. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Wood, Gordon. 1969. The Creation of the American Republic. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.