In The Moral Imagination, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America's most distinguished intellectual historians, explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times. In their distinctive ways, she argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the "moral imagination." Himmelfarb describes how each of these thinkers, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. It is this passion that makes their reflections-on politics and literature, religion and society, marriage and sex-sometimes unpredictable, often controversial, always exciting, and as illuminating and pertinent today as they were then. The second edition includes a revised introduction and three new essays on Adam Smith, Lord Acton, and Alfred Marshall.
Autorentext
By Gertrude Himmelfarb
Zusammenfassung
In The Moral Imagination, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America's most distinguished intellectual historians, explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times. In their distinctive ways, she argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the moral imagination. Himmelfarb describes how each of these thinkers, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. It is this passion that makes their reflectionson politics and literature, religion and society, marriage and sexsometimes unpredictable, often controversial, always exciting, and as illuminating and pertinent today as they were then.
Inhalt
Introduction
Chapter 1: Adam Smith: Political Economist cum Moral Philosopher
Chapter 2: Edmund Burke: Apologist for Judaism?
Chapter 3: George Eliot: The Wisdom of Dorothea
Chapter 4: Jane Austen: The Education of Emma
Chapter 5: Charles Dickens: "A Low Writer"
Chapter 6: Benjamin Disraeli: The Tory Imagination
Chapter 7: John Stuart Mill: The Other Mill
Chapter 8: Walter Bagehot: "A Divided Nature"
Chapter 9: Lord Acton: The Historian as Moralist
Chapter 10: Alfred Marshall: "The Economics of Chivalry
Chapter 11: John Buchan: An Untimely Appreciation
Chapter 12: The Knoxes: A God-Haunted Family
Chapter 13: Michael Oakeshott: The Conservative Disposition
Chapter 14: Winston Churchill: "Quite Simply, a Great Man"
Chapter 15: Lionel Trilling: The Moral Imagination
Notes
Index