Philosophy, Politics, Democracy: Selected Essays [Hardcover]

Over the past twenty years, Joshua Cohen has explored the most controversial issues facing the American public: campaign finance and political equality, privacy rights and robust public debate, hate speech and pornography, and the capacity of democracies to address important practical problems. In this highly anticipated volume, Cohen draws on his work in these diverse topics to develop an argument about what he calls, following John Rawls, democracys public reason. He rejects the conventional idea that democratic politics is simply a contest for power, and that philosophical argument is disconnected from life. Political philosophy, he insists, is part of politics, and its job is to contribute to the public reasoning about what we ought to do.At the heart of Cohens normative vision for our political life is an ideal of democracy in which citizens and their representatives deliberate about the requirements of justice and the common good. It is an idealistic picture, but also firmly grounded in the debates and struggles in which Cohen has been engaged over nearly three decades. Philosophy, Politics, Democracy explores these debates and considers their implications for the practice of democratic politics.For good reason, Joshua Cohen is widely regarded as among the leading political philosophers of his generation. Nearly all of these essays are highly original approaches to the topics discussed. Many of them are widely recognized by philosophers and political theorists as major and sometimes defining papers in their fields. Taken together, the collection develops an extremely impressive and intricate account of an ideal of democracy and democratic justice.Joshua Cohen ranks among the best and most influential political philosophers at work in the United States today. This uncommonly valuable volume will be a required purchase for anybody whose own work is at the boundary of philosophy and politics.Joshua Cohen is the leading political philosopher of deep democracy lƒ,