Results for Michael Walzer
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Columbia Encyclopedia: Walzer, Michael,
1935–, American political philosopher, b. New York City, attended Brandeis Univ. (B.A., 1956), Cambridge (1956–57), and Harvard (Ph.D., 1961). A prominent liberal thinker and prolific author, Walzer has written about many areas of political theory and moral philosophy. He is probably best known for his work on the morality of war, discussed in his classic Just and Unjust Wars (1977) and the more recent Arguing about War (2004). His work also has concentrated on issues of nationalism, ethnicity, economic justice, the welfare state, tolerance and accomodation, and the history of Jewish political thought. Other books include Political Action (1971), Spheres of Justice (1983), What It Means to Be an American (1992), and Politics and Passion (2004). Co-editor of Dissent magazine, Walzer is also a frequent contributer to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. Walzer has been a professor at Princeton (1962–66), Harvard (1966–80), and the Institute for Advanced Study (1980–).
 
 
Works: Works by Michael Walzer
(b. 1935)

1983Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. Walzer advances a widely debated argument that all people are not created equal. Since not everyone possesses equal talent and intelligence, simple egalitarianism (keeping everyone as equal as possible) is not feasible. Instead, he argues that a "complex" equality must evolve to acknowledge individual differences.

 
Wikipedia: Michael Walzer

Michael Walzer (3 March 1935) is one of America's leading political philosophers. Currently, he is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and editor of Dissent, a left-wing quarterly of politics and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, economic justice, social criticism, radicalism, tolerance, and political obligation. He is also a contributing editor to The New Republic and a member of the editorial board of Philosophy & Public Affairs. To date he has written 27 books and has published over 300 articles, essays, and book reviews. He is a member of several philosophical organizations including the American Philosophical Society.

Michael is the older brother of historian Judith Walzer Leavitt.

Walzer is usually identified as one of the leading proponents of the "Communitarian" position in political theory, along with Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Sandel. Like Sandel and MacIntyre, Walzer is not completely comfortable with this label. He has, however, long argued that political theory must be grounded in the traditions and culture of particular societies and opposed what he sees to be the excessive abstraction of political philosophy. His most important intellectual contributions include a revitalization of just war theory that insists on the importance of ethics in wartime while eschewing pacifism; the theory of "complex equality," which holds that the metric of just equality is not some single material or moral good, but rather that egalitarian justice demands that each good be distributed according to its social meaning, and that no good (like money or political power) be allowed to dominate or distort the distribution of goods in other spheres; and an argument that justice is primarily a moral standard within particular nations and societies, not one that can be developed in a universalized abstraction.

Education

In 1956 Walzer graduated Summa cum laude from Brandeis University with a B.A. in History. He then studied at the University of Cambridge on a Fulbright Fellowship (1956-1957) and completed his doctoral work at Harvard, earning his Ph.D. in Government in 1961.

Employment

Walzer was first employed as a professor in 1962 by Princeton University. He stayed there until 1966 when he moved to Harvard. He taught at Harvard until 1980 when he became a Permanent Faculty Member in the School of Social Science at the IAS.

Published works

  • The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Harvard University Press, 1965) ISBN 0-674-76786-1
  • Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Harvard University Press, 1970) ISBN 0-674-63025-4
  • Political Action (Quadrangle Books, 1971) ISBN 0-8129-0173-8
  • Regicide and Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1974) ISBN 0-231-08259-2
  • Just and Unjust Wars (Basic Books, 1977, second edition, 1992, third edition, 2000) ISBN 0-465-03705-4
  • Radical Principles (Basic Books, 1977) ISBN 0-465-06824-3
  • Spheres of Justice (Basic Books, 1983) ISBN 0-465-08189-4
  • Exodus and Revolution (Basic Books, 1985) ISBN 0-465-02164-6
  • Interpretation and Social Criticism (Harvard University Press, 1987) ISBN 0-674-45971-7
  • The Company of Critics (Basic Books, 1988) ISBN 0-465-01331-7
  • Civil Society and American Democracy (Rotbuch Verlag, 1992, in German) ISBN 3-596-13077-8
  • What It Means to Be an American (Marsilio Publishers, 1992) ISBN 1-56886-025-0
  • Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame Press, 1994) ISBN 0-268-01897-9
  • Pluralism, Justice and Equality, with David Miller (Oxford University Press, 1995) ISBN 0-19-828008-4
  • Toward a Global Civil Society (Berghahn Books, 1995) ISBN 1-57181-054-4
  • On Toleration (Yale University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-268-01897-9
  • Arguments from the Left (Atlas, 1997, in Swedish)
  • Pluralism and Democracy (Editions Esprit, 1997, in French) ISBN 2-909210-19-7
  • Reason, Politics, and Passion (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999, in German) ISBN 3-596-14439-6
  • The Jewish Political Tradition, Vol. I Authority, co-edited, with Menachem Lorberbaum, Noam Zohar, and Yair Lorberbaum (Yale University Press, 2000) ISBN 0-300-09428-0
  • Exilic Politics in the Hebrew Bible (Mohr Siebeck, 2001, in German) ISBN 3-16-147543-7
  • War, Politics, and Morality (Ediciones Paidos, 2001, in Spanish) ISBN 84-493-1167-5
  • Arguing About War (Yale University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-300-10365-4
  • Politics and Passion: Toward A More Egalitarian Liberalism (Yale University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-300-10328-X

See also

Sources and external links

For an analysis of communitarianism see: Gad Barzilai, Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003]


 
 

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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Michael Walzer" Read more

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