Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought

by Scott Yenor

Overview

With crisp prose and intellectual fairness, Family Politics traces the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world. What is family? What is marriage? In an effort to address contemporary society's disputes over the meanings of these human social institutions, Scott Yenor carefully examines a roster of major and unexpected modern political philosophers--from Locke and Rousseau to Hegel and Marx to Freud and Beauvoir. He lucidly presents how these individuals developed an understanding of family in order to advance their goals of political and social reform. Through this exploration, Yenor unveils the effect of modern liberty on this foundational institution and argues that the quest to pursue individual autonomy has undermined the nature of marriage and jeopardizes its future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781602584808
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	385
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Scott Yenor is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the American Founding Initiative at Boise State University. He lives in Boise, Idaho.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Nature, Marital Unity, and Contract in Modern Political Thought 1

Part I: The Ballast of Nature and the Ends of the Family

2 Locke and the Invention of the Modern Family

3 Rousseau and the Romance of Family Life

Part II: The Movin g Ballast of History

4 Hegel's Modern Marital Unity: More Than a Contract, Less Than a Sacrament

5 In Hegel's Shadow: French Sociologists and Positivist Defenses of the Family

Part III: Liberation and the Movement toward the Family's End

6 The City and the Soul Mate: Mill's Late Liberal Vision

7 Marx, Engels, and the Abolition of the Family

8 Freud, Russell, and the Liberated Family

9 Feminism and the Family

Part IV: The Old Family and a New Nature

10 Positivism Supplemented: Anatomy, Evolution, and the Family

11 A Second Sailing?: Recovering Marital Unity and the Purposes of the Family

12 What Is to Be Thought?: Tensions and Lessons

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

If an author is to be credited for wading into hotly contested waters with interpretations and arguments meant to invigorate an entirely new conversation about a perennial and perennially controversial topic, then Scott Yenor deserves a great deal of credit indeed.

Richard J. Mouw

Wonderful! This is an amazing achievement, blending sociological expertise, theological savvy, and profound spiritual sensitivities.

Ralph C. Hancock

Indispensable. While engaging the deepest and most vexing contemporary moral and political issues, Yenor avoids polemics, presenting opposing arguments in the best possible light while developing a distinctive position that is immediately relevant to vital contemporary debates.

Micah Watson

If an author is to be credited for wading into hotly contested waters with interpretations and arguments meant to invigorate an entirely new conversation about a perennial and perennially controversial topic, then Scott Yenor deserves a great deal of credit indeed.

Carson Holloway

Family Politics is the pursuit of political philosophy at its best. Enthusiastically recommended not only to scholars but to all who care about the fate of the family in the modern world.

Editorial Reviews

... an important contribution to the recovery of the family's meaning. [Yenor] argues convincingly that the framework provided by modern political thought does not provide sufficient means for our doing so.

Perspectives on Political Science

[Yenor] covers a wide range of the most important modern philosophic, political, social scientific, and religious works on the family. Few treatments of the foundational problems of the family are this thorough or deep.... Family Politics provides a good starting point for all those who seek to grapple with the problem of the modern family.

Claremont Review of Books

Scott Yenor's book...tackles an incredibly ambitious task in its aim to understand marriage in political thought over the last several centuries.

Humanities and Social Sciences Online - Alison Lefkovitz

"Wonderful! This is an amazing achievement, blending sociological expertise, theological savvy, and profound spiritual sensitivities."

--Richard J. Mouw, President and Professor of Christian Philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary

From the Publisher