Liberal Loyalty: Freedom, Obligation, and the State - Couverture rigide

Stilz, Anna B

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0691139148 ISBN 13 : 9780691139142

Editeur : Princeton University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In "Liberal Loyalty", Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves - rather than territory, common language, or shared culture - are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights. "Liberal Loyalty" is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Anna Stilz is assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Date d'édition: 2009
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0691139148
• ISBN 13: 9780691139142
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 264
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible