The Pursuit of Certainty

The Pursuit of Certainty
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 434
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0865971943
ISBN-13 : 9780865971943
Rating : 4/5 (943 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Pursuit of Certainty by : Shirley Robin Letwin

Download or read book The Pursuit of Certainty written by Shirley Robin Letwin and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By examining the thought of four seminal thinkers, Shirley Robin Letwin in The Pursuit of Certainty provides a brilliant record of the gradual change in the English-speaking peoples' understanding of "what sort of activity politics is." As Letwin writes, "the distinctive political issue since the eighteenth century has been whether government should do more or less." Nor, as many historians argue, did this issue arise because of the Industrial Revolution or "new social conditions [that] aggravated the problem of poverty" but, Letwin believes, because of the "profoundly personal reflection" of major thinkers, including Hume, Bentham, Mill, and Webb. David Hume, for example, believed that to "reach for perfection, to seek an ideal, is noble, but dangerous, and is therefore an activity that individuals or voluntary groups may pursue, but governments certainly should not." By the end of the nineteenth century, as Letwin observes, Beatrice Webb came to "equate the triumph of reason over passion with the rule of science over human life." Thus did the "pursuit of certainty" displace the traditional English understanding of the limitations of human nature--hence the necessity of limits to governmental power and programs. Consequently, in our time, "Politics was no longer one of several human activities and at that not a very noble one; it encompassed all of human life" in quest of philosophical "certainty" and social perfection. The Liberty Fund edition is a reprint of the original work published by Oxford in 1965. Shirley Robin Letwin (1924-1993) was a Professor of Political and Legal Philosophy at Harvard, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.


The Pursuit of Certainty Related Books

The Pursuit of Certainty
Language: en
Pages: 434
Authors: Shirley Robin Letwin
Categories: Law
Type: BOOK - Published: 1998 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

By examining the thought of four seminal thinkers, Shirley Robin Letwin in The Pursuit of Certainty provides a brilliant record of the gradual change in the Eng
The Pursuit of Certainty
Language: en
Pages: 334
Authors: Wendy James
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 1995 - Publisher: Psychology Press

GET EBOOK

An exploration of the effect of anthropology's inherited tradition of tolerance and cross-cultural understanding has on the new pursuits of truth.
Death Investigation in America
Language: en
Pages: 301
Authors: Jeffrey M Jentzen
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-02-15 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

GET EBOOK

Why is the American system of death investigation so inconsistent and inadequate? In this unique political and cultural history, Jeffrey Jentzen draws on archiv
The Pursuit of Certainty. David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb. [With Portraits.].
Language: en
Pages: 391
Authors: Shirley Robin Letwin
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 1965 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe
Language: en
Pages: 303
Authors: Barbara Fuchs
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-01-29 - Publisher: University of Toronto Press

GET EBOOK

This interdisciplinary collection explores how the early modern pursuit of knowledge in very different spheres – from Inquisitional investigations to biblical