Meditations on Modern Political Thought

Jean Bethke Elshtain is Centennial Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and author of several books, including Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (1981) and Women and War (1987).

“In some ways I like to compare this book to Alasdair MacIntyre’s wonderful A Short History of Ethics. The reason is that it so challenges conventionalities about what constitutes political theory. Therefore, Elshtain’s beginning with Luther is a wonderful way to show how so much of political liberalism embodied in Kant presumed a Lutheran distinction between the two kingdoms in a manner that we have suffered from ever since. . . . The book is written eloquently and with great grace that makes it accessible to a wide range of readers about issues that matter.”—Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University

• ContentsPreface: On Writing This Text ixAcknowledgments xiii1. Introduction: On Reading This Text 12. Luther's Two Kingdoms and the Eclipse of the Female [Mater Ecclesiae] 53. Kant and Rational Politics: Woman as a Suspect Category 214. Rousseau Redux: Bodies Social and Political 375. Feminism and Citizenship: Liberalism and Its Discontents 556. Self/Other, Citizen/State: G. W. F. Hegel and Jane Addams 717. Freud and the Therapeutic Society: Homo Politicus or Homo Psychologicus? 858. War and Political Discourse: From Machiavelli to Arendt 1039. A Concluding Chapter That Doesn't 115Bibliography 119Index 127