Putting Liberalism in Its Place

In a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary work, Paul Kahn argues that the modern political order is founded not on the social contract but on sacrifice. Liberalism's traditional reliance on the social contract is unable to explain the culmination of modern political life in the threat of complete nuclear annihilation. We can understand this modern condition only by recognizing that any political community, even a liberal one, is bound together by faith, love, and identity.</p>

Putting Liberalism in Its Place draws on philosophy, cultural theory, American constitutional law, religious and literary studies, and political psychology to advance political theory. It makes original contributions in all these fields. Not since Charles Taylor's The Sources of the Self has there been such an ambitious and sweeping examination of the deep structure of the modern conception of the self.</p>

Kahn shows that only when we move beyond liberalism's categories of reason and interest to a Judeo-Christian concept of love can we comprehend the modern self. Love is the foundation of a world of objective meaning, one form of which is the political community. Arguing from these insights, Kahn offers a new reading of the liberalism/communitarian debate, a genealogy of American liberalism, an exploration of the romantic and the pornographic, a new theory of the will, and a refoundation of political theory on the possibility of sacrifice.</p>

Approaching politics from the perspective of sacrifice allows us to understand the character of twentieth-century politics, which combined progress in the rule of law with massive slaughter for the state. Equally important, this work speaks to the most important political conflicts in the world today. It explains why American response to September 11 has taken the form of war, and why, for the most part, Europeans have been reluctant to follow the Americans in their pursuit of a violent, sacrificial politics. Kahn shows us that the United States has maintained a vibrant politics of modernity, while Europe is moving into a postmodern form of the political that has turned away from the idea of sacrifice.</p>

保罗·卡恩（Paul W.Kahn），耶鲁大学法学院罗伯特·W.温纳（Robert W.Winner）“法律与人文”讲席教授，耶鲁大学法学院小奥威尔·H.谢尔（Orville H. Schell, Jr.）国际人权研究中心主任。卡恩教授先后毕业于芝加哥大学与耶鲁大学，研究领域为宪法学、国际法学、文化理论与哲学。近期代表作品还有《走出伊甸园：亚当夏娃与恶的问题》（Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil, 2006）、《神圣暴力：酷刑、恐怖与主权》（Sacred Violence:Torture, Terror and Sovereignty, 2008）、《政治神学：新主权四论》（Political Theology:Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, 2011）、《影片中的自我：新生代的哲学》（Finding Ourselves at the Movies: Philosophy for a New Generation, 2013）。

田力，湖北武穴人，山东大学法学院法学学士，现为清华大学法学院法理学专业硕士研究生，《清华法律评论》编辑，研究领域包括法理学与宪法学。