Reason and Politics

Mark Blitz is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of numerous books, including Conserving Liberty, Plato's Political Philosophy, and Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life.

• Introduction1. The Nature of Practical Action2. The Nature of Freedom and Rights3. The Nature of Power and Property5. The Nature of What is Common6. The Nature of GoodsConclusion

"Blitz makes a strong case for a phenomenological approach to the study of politics. . . . [He] offers a radical, thought-provoking departure from the reigning orthodoxies of the profession." —Choice"In the course of this remarkable study, we learn that self-knowledge in our 'post-modern' condition requires seeing ourselves in light of both ancient politics and ancient philosophy; the former is the historical moment that provides the essential touchstone for serious trans-historical comparison of human experience and the latter is the way of seeing and thinking most suited to grasping the nature of things." —Perspectives on Political Science"Mark Blitz has written a work of high political philosophy that is at once clear and accessible. . . . Reason and Politics is dedicated to uncovering reasonably that which 'forms and directs' political phenomena, in a word their nature and everything that flows from that. While a product of unforced but altogether impressive erudition, Blitz's book aims to stay as concrete as possible, eschewing the abstractions that largely inform and deform late modern thought. " —Law and Liberty"This is a remarkable inquiry into the rational structure of the political phenomena that appear most irrational. Mark Blitz provides a path to clarity in the face of the complexity of our way of life, political partisanship, and the proliferation of false but powerful and ossified political doctrines. One may have to go back all the way to Hobbes to read a book of a comprehensiveness similar to Reason and Politics." —Svetozar Y. Minkov, author of Leo Strauss on Science"Reason and Politics is an unconventional and important contribution to the field of political philosophy. Mark Blitz uncovers what kind of people we in our age have to be in order to be concerned with justice, or virtue, or rights, or magnanimity, or the common good. He asks: What is going on in our bodies and minds when we have such experiences? And the result is a tour de force." —Jerry Weinberger, author of Benjamin Franklin Unmasked