The Virtues of Mendacity

The Virtues of Mendacity
Author :
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Total Pages : 265
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780813929767
ISBN-13 : 0813929768
Rating : 4/5 (768 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Virtues of Mendacity by : Martin Jay

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.


The Virtues of Mendacity Related Books

The Virtues of Mendacity
Language: en
Pages: 265
Authors: Martin Jay
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-05-10 - Publisher: University of Virginia Press

GET EBOOK

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 particularl
Truth and Democracy
Language: en
Pages: 359
Authors: Jeremy Elkins
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-01-31 - Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

GET EBOOK

Political theorists Jeremy Elkins and Andrew Norris observe that American political culture is deeply ambivalent about truth. On the one hand, voices on both th
Political Hypocrisy
Language: en
Pages: 286
Authors: David Runciman
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-08 - Publisher: Princeton University Press

GET EBOOK

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 ourselv
The Mendacity of Hope
Language: en
Pages: 276
Authors: Roger D. Hodge
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-10-05 - Publisher: Harper Collins

GET EBOOK

“The Mendacity of Hope should help wake up all those Obama-voters who've been napping while the wars escalate, the recession deepens, and the environment goes
Education and the Spirit of Time
Language: en
Pages: 267
Authors: Olli-Pekka Moisio
Categories: Electronic books
Type: BOOK - Published: 2006 - Publisher: Sense Publishers

GET EBOOK

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 educat