The Virtues Of Mendacity

Download or read book The Virtues of Mendacity written by Martin Jay and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Michael Dukakis accused George H. W. Bush of being the "Joe Isuzu of American Politics" during the 1988 presidential campaign, he asserted in a particularly American tenor the near-ancient idea that lying and politics (and perhaps advertising, too) are inseparable, or at least intertwined. Our response to this phenomenon, writes the renowned intellectual historian Martin Jay, tends to vacillate—often impotently—between moral outrage and amoral realism. In The Virtues of Mendacity, Jay resolves to avoid this conventional framing of the debate over lying and politics by examining what has been said in support of, and opposition to, political lying from Plato and St. Augustine to Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. Jay proceeds to show that each philosopher’s argument corresponds to a particular conception of the political realm, which decisively shapes his or her attitude toward political mendacity. He then applies this insight to a variety of contexts and questions about lying and politics. Surprisingly, he concludes by asking if lying in politics is really all that bad. The political hypocrisy that Americans in particular periodically decry may be, in Jay’s view, the best alternative to the violence justified by those who claim to know the truth.

Download or read book Education and the Spirit of Time written by Olli-Pekka Moisio and published by Sense Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to raise current social, political, and moral issues in social theory by taking a critical stance towards historical, global, and educational themes in the context of culture, politics, and technology.Thus the focus of the book is critical Zeitgeist analysis, and its potential in addressing various social maladies of the present era. Methodologically, critical Zeitgeist analysis is argued to be of value in demonstrating how to both utilize and expand the possibilities of writing normative social theory.

Download or read book The Maltese Falcon to Body of Lies written by Robert Von Hallberg and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining twenty-eight great noir films from the earliest examples of the genre, including The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Out of the Past, to such twenty-first-century spy films as The Good Shepherd, Syriana, and The Bourne Ultimatum, this study explores the representations of trust and commitment that noir and spy films propose.

Download or read book Virtue in Global Governance written by Jan Klabbers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since rules - legal, ethical or otherwise - cannot determine their own application, they require persons of flesh and blood to interpret and apply them in concrete cases. Presidents and prime ministers, judges, prosecutors, mediators, leaders of international organizations, and even religious leaders and public intellectuals make decisions on how best to understand rules and how best to apply them. It stands to reason that their character traits influence the sort of decisions they take. This book provides the first systematic framework for discussing global governance in terms of the virtues, and illustrates it with a number of detailed examples of concrete decision-making in specific situations. Virtue in Global Governance combines insights from law, ethics, and global governance studies in developing a unique approach to global governance and international law.

Download or read book Secrets, Lies and Children’s Fiction written by K. Mallan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many children learn from a young age to tell the truth. They also learn that some lies are necessary in order to survive in a world that paradoxically values truth-telling, but practises deception. This book examines this paradox by considering how deception is often a necessary means of survival for individuals, families, governments, and animals.

Download or read book A Brief History of Fascist Lies written by Federico Finchelstein and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is no better book on fascism's complex and vexed relationship with truth."—Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them In this short companion to his book From Fascism to Populism in History, world-renowned historian Federico Finchelstein explains why fascists regarded simple and often hateful lies as truth, and why so many of their followers believed the falsehoods. Throughout the history of the twentieth century, many supporters of fascist ideologies regarded political lies as truth incarnated in their leader. From Hitler to Mussolini, fascist leaders capitalized on lies as the base of their power and popular sovereignty. This history continues in the present, when lies again seem to increasingly replace empirical truth. Now that actual news is presented as “fake news” and false news becomes government policy, A Brief History of Fascist Lies urges us to remember that the current talk of “post-truth” has a long political and intellectual lineage that we cannot ignore.

Download or read book Political Hypocrisy written by David Runciman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical assessement of the problems of sincerity and truth in politics argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics without resigning ourselves to it or embracing it, drawing on the lessons of such thinkers as Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sigwick, and Orwell.