5. The iconic Socrates

2019 ◽  
pp. 103-114
Author(s):  
C. C. W. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
The Us ◽  
Intellectual Integrity

‘The iconic Socrates’ considers Socrates’ role as a gay icon and an icon for civil disobedience. In the Platonism revival of the Florentine Renaissance, the high-minded picture of Platonic/Socratic love focused on the spiritual and intellectual perfection of the beloved, but in an alternative ancient tradition Socrates was presented as a sexual enthusiast, with a penchant for attractive boys. The context of Socrates’ emergence as a major political icon of the 20th century was provided by the US civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement, but there is no evidence that Socrates ever actually espoused civil disobedience as a political ideology or performed any act of civil disobedience. Socrates remains a pioneer of systematic ethical thought and a paragon of moral and intellectual integrity.

Disobedience In Black

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Juliet Hooker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S

Philosophical and political questions about the legitimacy of uncivil disobedience have been a core preoccupation of African American political thought since its inception. Additionally, a systematic misreading of black protest movements, particularly the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, has been a fundamental referent for philosophical defenses of a right to civil disobedience. This essay takes Candice Delmas’s defense of uncivil disobedience as a point of departure to reflect on how African American political thought challenges dominant liberal understandings of dissent, and to consider the conceptions of political obligation that should accompany accounts of principled lawbreaking.

Becoming the Rolling Quads: Disability Politics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 506-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scot Danforth
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
California Department ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
The University

Historical analyses of 1960s university campus activism have focused on activities related to the civil rights movement, Free Speech Movement, and opposition to the Vietnam War. This study supplements the historiography of civil disobedience and political activity on college campuses during that tumultuous era with an account of the initiation of the disability rights movement with the Rolling Quads, a group of disabled student activists at the University of California, Berkeley. This small group, with little political experience and limited connections to campus and community activists, organized to combat the paternalistic managerial practices of the university and the California Department of Rehabilitation. Drawing from the philosophy and strategies of the seething political culture of 1969 Berkeley, the Rolling Quads formed an activist cell that expanded within less than a decade into the most influential disability rights organization in the country.

scholarly journals CITIZENSHIP, WAR, AND THE ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL ETHICS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1960–1975

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 773-801 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATRINA FORRESTER
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
International Ethics ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
1960S And 1970S

ABSTRACTThis article examines a series of debates about civil disobedience, conscription, and the justice of war that took place among American liberal philosophers, lawyers, and activists during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. It argues that these debates fundamentally reshaped American political philosophy, by shifting the focus from the welfare state to the realm of international politics. In order to chart this transition from the domestic to the international, this article focuses on the writings of two influential political theorists, John Rawls and Michael Walzer. The turn to international politics in American political philosophy has its origins, in part, in their arguments about domestic citizenship. In tracing these origins, this article situates academic philosophical arguments alongside debates among the American public at large. It offers a first account of the history of analytical political philosophy during the 1960s and 1970s, and argues that the role played by the Vietnam War in this history, though underappreciated, is significant.

When the Movies Mattered

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
New Hollywood ◽  
Urban Decay ◽  
Uncertain Outcomes ◽  
The Times

The “New Hollywood” that emerged in the late sixties is now widely recognized as an era of remarkable filmmaking, when directors enjoyed a unique autonomy to craft ambitious, introspective movies that evinced a cinematic world of hard choices, complex interpersonal relationships, compromised heroes, and uncertain outcomes. The New Hollywood Revisited brings together a remarkable collection of authors (some of whom wrote about the New Hollywood as it unfolded), to revisit this unique era in American cinema (circa 1967-1976). It was a decade in which a number of extraordinary factors – including the end of a half-century-old censorship regime and economic and demographic changes to the American film audience – converged and created a new type of commercial film, imprinted with the social and political context of the times: the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, economic distress, urban decay, and, looming, the Shakespearean saga of the Nixon presidency. This volume offers the opportunity to look back, with nearly fifty years hindsight, at a golden age in American filmmaking.

God Can Save Us

Rough Country ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Moral Majority ◽  
Jerry Falwell ◽  
Protestant Denominations

This chapter discusses the emergence of the New Christian Right or simply the Religious Right as a powerful new force in American politics. The rise of the Religious Right has been examined from all angles, and several key factors have been identified. It clearly depended on leadership. The most visible leaders were preacher Jerry Falwell, whose Moral Majority rallies at state capitals had been gaining attention in the late 1970s, and fellow televangelist Pat Robertson, whose popular 700 Club television program included discussions of social and moral topics. Both were canny entrepreneurs who knew how to attract media attention, and there were conservative political operatives eager to enlist their support. There were unifying issues as well, such as opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and promiscuity, and the more general sense that religion was under siege by secularity and humanism. And there were lingering divisions within Protestant denominations and among Catholics over such issues as social activism, the legacies of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, communism, gender equality, the ordination of women, and theology.

Print News and Raise Hell

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Joel Zogry
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
Student Newspaper ◽  
Print News ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Democratic Rule

This chapter covers the tumultuous 1960s at UNC and beyond, and at the Daily Tar Heel. The 1960 Dixie Classic, UNC’s most infamous sports scandal, is discussed, as is a 1961 speech on campus by President John F. Kennedy. The Civil Rights Movement is covered in detail, as Chapel Hill was a center for protest; the student newspaper took on a new activist role during this time, sending reporters across the South to report on Civil Rights events. The infamous Speaker Ban Law is examined in detail, 1963-1968. In 1963 UNC became completely co-educational, and the changes on campus and the issues facing women students is explored, including the role of the sexual revolution, access to birth control, and the fight over legalizing abortion. The major shift in state politics, away from one-party Democratic rule is discussed, and the rise of conservative politician Jesse Helms, who used UNC and the Daily Tar Heel as examples of extreme liberalism and permissiveness to help build his political base. The Vietnam War, the 1969 UNC Foodworker’s Strike, gay rights, and contributions of later renowned cartoonist Jeff MacNelly on the newspaper are other topics in this chapter

National Review and the Changing Narrative of Civil Rights Memory 1968–2016

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-189
Author(s):  
Robert Greene
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
National Review ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Historical Memories ◽  
Martin Luther King

This chapter analyzes the National Review’s shifting narratives and historical memories of the contentious relationship between the modern conservative movement, Martin Luther King Jr., and the US civil rights movement. National Review writers largely opposed the civil rights movement up until the mid-1960s, casting Black freedom activists and their goals as threats to civilized order and the spirit of the US Constitution. Yet, the National Review would ultimately take on a leading role in reconsidering the conservative movement’s animosity toward King and civil rights—drawing parallels between conservative principles and civil rights claims, and even making fraught color-blind conservative claims to King’s legacy.

On Civil Disobedience in Recent American Democratic Thought

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Power
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Nuremberg Trials ◽  
Fourth Wave

Theoretical discussions of civil disobedience on ethical and political grounds received special attention in this country during the Nuremberg trials, the security and loyalty controversies of the 1950's and the pre-arms control years of nuclear power. A fourth wave of interest formed after the early civil rights protests and a fifth is appearing to consider dissent from national policies on the Vietnam War. In this paper civil disobedience is viewed from a trough between the fourth and most recent wave. The phenomenon is interpreted with selected ideas from the study of political obligation and unconventional dissent. The essay first assesses recent American analysis of civil disobedience to determine what the criteria should be to distinguish it from other forms of political action and to discover its political ethics. Secondly, there is an attempt to answer the question: Is there any appreciable service that carefully defined civil disobedience might perform in American democratic thought? The complete enterprise is provoked by a need to examine new strategies for democratic citizenship in a time when the deficiencies of American political life are becoming known to increasing numbers and varieties of people instead of remaining the preserve of enlightened elites.

Then and Now: Participant‐Observation in Political Theory

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Connolly
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Difference

This article examines changes in the study of participant-observation in the field of political theory. It explains that in the early 1960s, political theory was widely considered as a moribund enterprise. Empiricists were pushing a new science of politics, designed to replace the options of constitutional interpretation, impressionistic theory, and traditionalism. But by the mid-1960s the end of ideology screeched to a halt because of growing outrage about the Vietnam War, worries among college students about the draft, and the emergence of a civil rights movement. The academic study of political theory was revived and a series of studies emerged to challenge the fact-value dichotomy, the difference between science and ideology, and the public roles of academics.

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