41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, December 25, 2001
This review is from: The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order & Freedom (ICS Series in Self-Governance) (Paperback)
Robert Nisbet (1913-1996) was one of the most important conservative thinkers in the twentieth century and this work, The Quest for Community, was perhaps his most influential. It helped spark a Renaissance in conservative thought in America, appearing around the same time as Voegelin's The New Science of Politics, Buckley's God and Man at Yale, and Kirk's The Conservative Mind. [Brad Stone, Robert Nisbet, p. xvi.]
Modern man craves community and order. As Nisbet says, modern society encourages a sense of alienation and a loss of community. Nisbet brilliantly describes how modern literature, politics and religion bears witness to this sense of alienation. If man can't find community in mediating institutions such as the church and the family, he will find it in totalitarian movements. "The greatest appeal of the totalitarian party, Marxist or other, lies in its capacity to provide a sense of moral coherence and communal membership to those who have become, to one degree or another, victims of the sense of exclusion from the ordinary channels of belonging in society." [p. 32.] War itself becomes a means of escape from the "vast impersonal spaces of modern society." [p. 34.]
In addition to describing alienation in modern life, Nisbet analyzes the ideological origins of man's loss of community. Although many paved the way for this state of affairs, the chief villain was Rousseau. Rousseau sees the individual and the state as the two most basic entities, and it is the state that reconciles the conflicts between men and within man himself. [pp. 125-28.] The state "frees" man by destroying his allegiance to intermediate social institutions, thereby freeing him for service to the General Will.
This is the most important work I read in 2001. I would say that it ranks with Prof. Martin van Creveld's masterly The Rise and Decline of the State as one of the most important works on the theory of the state in print. Coincidentally, I reviewed that work exactly one year ago today.
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic and great work, February 13, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order & Freedom (ICS Series in Self-Governance) (Paperback)
This is truly one of the best works of sociology I have ever read. The topic and slant of the book is truly unique: that people search for and need 'community', or meaningful relationships in social groups. Nisbet tracks the decline of many of the once relevant and viable social groups, and how their position has been encroached on by the State and centralized capitalism, with a keen historical analysis. His broad and deep analysis is indeed stunning. The length of the book, around 250 pages, is also very workable. The only negative about this book is that Nisbet's prose is sometimes awkward, though at other times beautiful.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remember the date!, July 23, 2006
This review is from: The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order & Freedom (ICS Series in Self-Governance) (Paperback)
The book reads like a contemporary critique of our society. When I discovered it was written in 1953, I realized I was holding the works of a true prophet. Nisbet predicted and explained the developments of our times.
I particularly appreciated his explanation of what happened to the power held by a non-government institutions (e.g. the church) when it declined as an institution. The answer was that a small part was given to individuals and the rest went to the central government. Hence the odd paradox of ever increasing individual freedom in the face a dramatic increase in the power of the central government. Both individual and state were taking power from community institutions, however unequal the division.
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