Joshua Mitchell – författare

This book is an exploration of Plato''s Republic that bypasses arcane scholarly debates. Plato''s Fable provides refreshing insight into what, in Plato''s view, is the central problem of life: the mortal propensity to adopt defective ways of answering the question of how to live well. How, in light of these tendencies, can humankind be saved? Joshua Mitchell discusses the question in unprecedented depth by examining one of the great books of Western civilization. He draws us beyond the ancients/moderns debate, and beyond the notion that Plato''s Republic is best understood as shedding light on the promise of discursive democracy. Instead, Mitchell argues, the question that ought to preoccupy us today is neither "reason" nor "discourse," but rather "imitation." To what extent is man first and foremost an "imitative" being? This, Mitchell asserts, is the subtext of the great political and foreign policy debates of our times. Plato''s Fable is not simply a work of textual exegesis. It is an attempt to move debates within political theory beyond their current location. Mitchell recovers insights about the depth of the problem of mortal imitation from Plato''s magnificent work, and seeks to explicate the meaning of Plato''s central claim--that "only philosophy can save us."

America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world. Today, three afflictions keep us from pursuing that noble ideal. The first and most obvious affliction is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering. For now, the sacrificial scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, who will be the object of cathartic rage? White women? Black men? Identity politics is the anti-egalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged. The second affliction is that citizens oscillate back and forth, in bipolar fashion, at one moment feeling invincible on their social media platforms and, the next, feeling impotent to face the everyday problems of life without the guidance of experts and global managers. Third, Americans are afflicted by a disease that cannot quite be named, characterized by an addictive hope that they can find cheap shortcuts that bypass the difficult labors of everyday life. Instead of real friendship, we seek social media “friends.”Instead of meals at home, we order “fast food.” Instead of real shopping, we “shop” online. Instead of counting on our families and neighbors to address our problems, we look to the state to take care of us. In its many forms, this disease promises release from our labors, yet impoverishes us all. American Awakening chronicles all of these problems, yet gives us hope for the future.

America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world. Today, three afflictions keep us from pursuing that noble ideal. The first and most obvious affliction is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering. For now, the sacrificial scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, who will be the object of cathartic rage? White women? Black men? Identity politics is the anti-egalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged. The second affliction is that citizens oscillate back and forth, in bipolar fashion, at one moment feeling invincible on their social media platforms and, the next, feeling impotent to face the everyday problems of life without the guidance of experts and global managers. Third, Americans are afflicted by a disease that cannot quite be named, characterized by an addictive hope that they can find cheap shortcuts that bypass the difficult labors of everyday life. Instead of real friendship, we seek social media “friends.”Instead of meals at home, we order “fast food.” Instead of real shopping, we “shop” online. Instead of counting on our families and neighbors to address our problems, we look to the state to take care of us. In its many forms, this disease promises release from our labors, yet impoverishes us all. American Awakening chronicles all of these problems, yet gives us hope for the future.

We live in the democratic age. So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, in his magisterial work, Democracy in America.  Tocqueville thought this meant that as each nation left behind the vestiges of its aristocracy, life for its citizens or subjects would be increasingly isolated and lonely.

In America, we know of our growing isolation and loneliness.  What of the Middle East?  In the Middle East today, citizens and subjects live amid a profound tension: Familial and tribal linkages hold them fast, and at the same time rapid modernization has left them as isolated and lonely as so many Americans are today. The looming question, anticipated so long ago by Tocqueville, is how they will respond to this isolation and loneliness.

Joshua Mitchell has spent years teaching Tocqueville’s social theory, in America and the Arab Gulf, and with Tocqueville in Arabia, he offers a profound account of how the crisis of isolation and loneliness is playing out in similar and in different ways, in America and in the Middle East. 

We live in a time rife with mutual misunderstandings between America and the Middle East. Tocqueville in Arabia offers a guide to the present, troubled times, leavened by the author’s hopes about the future.

In American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell compares today’s secular politics of identity—skin tone, gender, and sexuality—to the religious awakenings of America’s past. The book asks where the clerisy of identity politics came from, how identity politics claimed a death grip on liberalism, and how can it be defeated.

We are living in the midst of an American Awakening, without God and without forgiveness. The first two Awakenings brought religious renewal; the third—the social gospel movement and its aftermath (1880–1910)—invoked the authority of religion to bring about political and social transformation, but lost sight of Christianity along the way.The Awakening through which we are now living comprehends politics through the categories of religion without recognizing it, has no place for the God who judges or the God who forgives, and has brought America to a dead end, beyond which no one can see. Identity politics renders judgment not based on sins of omission and commission, but on the publicly visible, unalterable attributes that precede whatever citizens might do or leave undone. Identity politics offers no forgiveness for transgressions, because they are irredeemable. Liberal politics was once concerned with working together to build a common world. Identity politics has transformed politics. It has turned politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering.For the moment, the irredeemable scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, on whom will innocent victims turn their cathartic rage? White women? Black men?Identity politics is the antiegalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged. If religious revivals are understood as collective efforts to redeem a stained world, then identity politics is an American religious revival—this time around, without God.