Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and PoliticsUniversity of Chicago Press, 1994 - 322 pages To which institutions or social practices should we grant authority? When should we instead assert our own sense of what is right or good or necessary? In this book, James Boyd White shows how texts by some of our most important thinkers and writers—including Plato, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Mandela, and Lincoln—answer these questions, not in the abstract, but in the way they wrestle with the claims of the world and self in particular historical and cultural contexts. As they define afresh the institutions or practices for which they claim (or resist) authority, they create authorities of their own, in the very modes of thought and expression they employ. They imagine their world anew and transform the languages that give it meaning. In so doing, White maintains, these works teach us about how to read and judge claims of authority made by others upon us; how to decide to which institutions and practices we should grant authority; and how to create authorities of our own through our thoughts and arguments. Elegant and accessible, this book will appeal to anyone wanting to better understand one of the primary processes of our social and political lives. |
Other editions - View all
Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and Politics James Boyd White Limited preview - 1995 |
Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and Politics James Boyd White Limited preview - 1994 |
Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and Politics James Boyd White No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
abortion ACTS OF HOPE African Alice Fulton argue argument Athens authority Barrowists Bolingbroke central character church claim constitutional course Court Crawford created Crito crown culture death defined dialectic Dickinson Edmund Emily Dickinson especially essential established example experience fact Fanny Fanny's feel force Gorgias Hale Hale's Henry Henry Bolingbroke Hooker human imagine institution issue judge judgment justice kind king language lawyer least live Lochner Mandela Mansfield Park Mary matter meaning ment mind moral nature Nelson Mandela Nomoi Norris one's opinion particular perhaps person persuade Plato play poem poetry political position principle Protestantism question reader reason reform relation respect response Richard Richard Hooker Richard II scripture sense sentence simply Sir Thomas Socrates South Africa speak speech stare decisis tells things thinking and talking thought tion transformation truth University Press unjust voice writing