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Democracy and the Ethical Life: A Philosophy of Politics and Community

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This is an excellent work of scholarship and is highly recommended to anyone interested in political philosophy. Professor Ryn draws on many sources, but most specifically ideas about the ethical life of the individual in relation to the community embodied in Aristotle's "Nichomachaen Ethics", Judeo-Christian morality, Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution", the "Federalist Papers", and the moral, esthetic, and political philosophy found in the "New Humanism" of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More. Ryn contrasts the egostical idealistic(i.e. unrealistic), and ethically distorted imagination of a Rousseau with the ethical and realistic imagination of a Burke, and shows how these differing worldviews lead to the contrasting and conflicting political visions of the utopian socialist(e.g.Robespierre, Lenin, et. al.) and the constitutional republican (e.g. Madison, Lincoln, et. al). To paraphase Madison, men are neither beasts nor angels. Beasts are incapable of government, and angels don't need government. Rousseau foolishly idealized a non-existent "natural man", while equally foolishly sanctioning bestial behavior by wrongly concluding that human evil was the result of social and economic oppression.

The individual who governs himself by attention to his "inner check" freely consents to constitutional government, with its checks and balances and concepts of ordered liberty, free market economy,federalism, and representative government as the best regime practicable for our diverse and pluralistic community.

To those who like this book I would also highly recommend Babbitt's "Rousseau and Romanticism", Thomas Sowell's "Conflict of Visions", Harry V. Jaffa's "Crisis of the House Divided", Pierre Manent's "City of Man", Nicholas Wolterstorff's "Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology" and Prof. Ralph Ketchum's excellent one volume biography of James Madison.

This book exlores in depth two main contending views of democracy. The authour shows them to be radically different and ultimately incompatible. The book relates the two forms to different notions of man and society. It defends American constitutionalism as an example of constitutional democracy and rejects "plebiscitary" democracy as destructive of the civilized society. Agree or disagree with the author's conclusion, this is a penetrating work with broad philosophical relevance--really makes yoy think!