Utopia & Revolution: On the Origins of a MetaphorThe most comprehensive study of ideology and utopia since Karl Mannheim's work of the 1930s, Utopia and Revolution can be understood as turning classical political theory on its head or, perhaps, inside out. Instead of the usual summary of how English radical theologies contributed to the revolutionary process, Lasky shows how such political theology of the mid-seventeenth century became the backbone of the natural history of revolutionary disasters. In a remarkable feat of scholarship in intellectual history, Lasky charts the course of this historic entanglement over some five turbulent centuries of Western history. In so doing, he traces the ideological extension of the human personality through the writings of political theorists, philosophers, poets, and historians. |
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... society men interested in forming , as it were , centers of shadow , even the people will find itself plunged into a profound darkness . —Diderot , Encyclopédie Introduction to the Transaction Edition Preface Part 1 Ideals 1.
... society by political action and violent upheaval . The second lecture began with revolution and ended with dogma ; that is , it moved from the revolutionary commitment to a dogmatic faith in violence and total control . The third ...
... society , Tolstoy and his brothers decided to call themselves , in their surprising , upsetting phrase , the " Ant - Brothers . " If the chief secret was not yet theirs , at least " the Ant - Brotherhood was revealed to us , " and it ...
... Societies were made.10 2. The Distorting Mirror I want to suggest no more than the insectarian potential in the ... society to its particular environ- ment ... " He finds these features equally true for Plato's Republic , Al- dous ...
... societies that have never existed are really programmes of action masquerading in the disguise of descriptive sociology ; and the action which they are in- tended to evoke is the " pegging , " at a certain social level , of an actual ...