Democracy’s Discontent A New Edition for Our Perilous Times
A renowned political philosopher updates his classic book on the American political tradition to address the perils democracy confronts today.
The 1990s were a heady time. The Cold War had ended, and America’s version of liberal capitalism seemed triumphant. And yet, amid the peace and prosperity, anxieties about the project of self-government could be glimpsed beneath the surface.
So argued Michael Sandel, in his influential and widely debated book Democracy’s Discontent, published in 1996. The market faith was eroding the common life. A rising sense of disempowerment was likely to provoke backlash, he wrote, from those who would “shore up borders, harden the distinction between insiders and outsiders, and promise a politics to ‘take back our culture and take back our country,’ to ‘restore our sovereignty’ with a vengeance.”
In this new edition, Sandel updates his classic work for an age when democracy’s discontent has hardened into a country divided against itself. He extends his account of America’s civic struggles from the 1990s to the present. He shows how Democrats and Republicans alike embraced a version of finance-driven globalization that created a society of winners and losers and fueled the toxic politics of our time.
In a work celebrated when first published as “a remarkable fusion of philosophical and historical scholarship” (Alan Brinkley), Sandel recalls moments in the American past when the country found ways to hold economic power to democratic account. To reinvigorate democracy, Sandel argues in a stirring new epilogue, we need to reconfigure the economy and empower citizens as participants in a shared public life.
HistoryUnited StatesPhilosophyPoliticalPolitical SciencePolitical Ideologies
RELEASED2022
PUBLISHERHarvard University Press
LENGTH428
LANGUAGEEN
Michael J. Sandel (born 1953) is an American political philosopher. He is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government Theory at Harvard University Law School, where his course Justice was the university's first course to be made freely available online and on television. It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named the "most influential foreign figure of the year" (China Newsweek). He is also known for his critique of John Rawls' *A Theory of Justice* in his first book, *Liberalism and the Limits of Justice* (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. **Source**: [Michael J. Sandel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sandel) on Wikipedia.
Democracy’s Discontent A New Edition for Our Perilous Times
A renowned political philosopher updates his classic book on the American political tradition to address the perils democracy confronts today.
The 1990s were a heady time. The Cold War had ended, and America’s version of liberal capitalism seemed triumphant. And yet, amid the peace and prosperity, anxieties about the project of self-government could be glimpsed beneath the surface.
So argued Michael Sandel, in his influential and widely debated book Democracy’s Discontent, published in 1996. The market faith was eroding the common life. A rising sense of disempowerment was likely to provoke backlash, he wrote, from those who would “shore up borders, harden the distinction between insiders and outsiders, and promise a politics to ‘take back our culture and take back our country,’ to ‘restore our sovereignty’ with a vengeance.”
In this new edition, Sandel updates his classic work for an age when democracy’s discontent has hardened into a country divided against itself. He extends his account of America’s civic struggles from the 1990s to the present. He shows how Democrats and Republicans alike embraced a version of finance-driven globalization that created a society of winners and losers and fueled the toxic politics of our time.
In a work celebrated when first published as “a remarkable fusion of philosophical and historical scholarship” (Alan Brinkley), Sandel recalls moments in the American past when the country found ways to hold economic power to democratic account. To reinvigorate democracy, Sandel argues in a stirring new epilogue, we need to reconfigure the economy and empower citizens as participants in a shared public life.
HistoryUnited StatesPhilosophyPoliticalPolitical SciencePolitical IdeologiesDemocracyHistory & Theory
RELEASED2022
PUBLISHERHarvard University Press
LENGTH428
LANGUAGEEN
Michael J. Sandel (born 1953) is an American political philosopher. He is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government Theory at Harvard University Law School, where his course Justice was the university's first course to be made freely available online and on television. It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named the "most influential foreign figure of the year" (China Newsweek). He is also known for his critique of John Rawls' *A Theory of Justice* in his first book, *Liberalism and the Limits of Justice* (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. **Source**: [Michael J. Sandel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sandel) on Wikipedia.
