David Thunder
  • Home
  • Academic Profile
    • bio
    • research statement
    • writings
    • CV
  • RESPUBLICA Project
  • Public Engagement
  • The Freedom Blog
  • Videos
  • Why I Was Deplatformed
    • Open Letter to Twitter
    • Latest Exchange with Twitter
  • Photography
    • Indoors
    • Close-Up
    • Cityscape
    • Landscape
    • Seascape
  • CV
  • Contact
Picture
Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

  • ISBN: 978-1107-068-933
  • Available on Amazon in Kindle and hardback editions.

The central goal of this book, as stated in its preface, is "to rehabilitate an ethically grounded ideal of citizenship and public service, one that refuses to separate political endeavors from the quest for human excellence" (xi). Classical authors, such as Plato and Aristotle, viewed all domains of human action as expressive - at least, ideally - of the agent's commitment to live an excellent or worthy human life. Modern thinkers, such as Luther, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, have tended to insulate political action from citizens' ethical and/or religious ideals, in the name of liberty, public order, toleration, or public reason. Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life challenges this modern effort to "quarantine" political reasoning from fundamental ethical commitments - associated in recent times with thinkers such as John Rawls, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Michael Walzer - and attempts instead to develop an "integrationist" vision of citizenship that permits citizens to give full play to their deepest ethical commitments in their role as citizens and public officials.

I argue
against Rawlsian efforts to "sanitize" public reason from "thick" ethical and religious commitments, and against Niebuhrian arguments that responsible political action in the modern world inevitably requires citizens and officials to compromise their ethical integrity, either directly or by complicity with the actions of the State. The motivation for this project is the author's convictions that the insulation of public life from citizens' ethical commitments puts in jeopardy not only our integrity as persons but also the legitimacy and moral resilience of our political communities.


Endorsements
David Thunder makes an excellent case for the wholeness of citizenship, in which the best citizen and the best person come together. His analysis is useful whether one agrees or not and is stated so agreeably that all can admire its clarity and persuasiveness.

                – Harvey C. Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution,                     Stanford University.

It is commonly held by political philosophers and theologians that the ethical principles that guide one in one’s attempt to live a worthy human life should not be decisive for what one does in one’s role as citizen; that role, so it is said, has its own distinct principles and source of principles. David Thunder makes the most detailed and powerful case anyone has yet made against this separationist thesis and in support of the opposing integrationist thesis: that we should give our deepest ethical commitments full play in what we do as citizens. Not only does personal ethical integrity require it; liberal democracy is in danger if citizens wall off the role of citizen from the norms and values that make for a worthy human life. Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life is the ‘against the grain’ book that those of us who do not buy the separationist thesis have long been looking for.

                – Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale                                             University, and Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Academic Profile
    • bio
    • research statement
    • writings
    • CV
  • RESPUBLICA Project
  • Public Engagement
  • The Freedom Blog
  • Videos
  • Why I Was Deplatformed
    • Open Letter to Twitter
    • Latest Exchange with Twitter
  • Photography
    • Indoors
    • Close-Up
    • Cityscape
    • Landscape
    • Seascape
  • CV
  • Contact